


Holocene

by inanatticinnovember



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: A.U.gust, Alternate Universe, Angst, Gangster!Mickey, M/M, POV Third Person, Science Fiction, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-11 08:40:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2061465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inanatticinnovember/pseuds/inanatticinnovember
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're building something in the basement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Water Ripples In The Cup

_July 21 st Present Day; Southside Chicago_

_4:33 PM_

 

They feel like gods.

The longer they build the machine, the more Ian begins to believe in it. And it scares him. It scares him to absolutely no end. But he can’t back out now. They’re in too deep.

The water ripples in the waxy paper cup as Ian places it down on the work bench.

“It looks like a dog digested it.”

Ian’s lips feel Sahara dry. The water doesn’t help.

“No one said it’d be pretty,” Lip mumbles from beneath the work bench. He’s checking the glue on the forest of PVC pipe.

Things are different today. Ian can feel it in the air. A summer storm is rolling through Chicago and the basement air is damp and muggy. The front of Lip’s tank top has a sweat stain on the chest that closely resembles Venezuela. Ian pulls out his Marlboros and lights one. The smoke distorts his view of the machine on the table.

“All good down there?” Ian asks around his cigarette.

“The fuck are you inquiring about my dick for man?”

“That’s not what I meant, asshole.” Ian snorts.

Lip pulls himself out from under the workbench and straightens up.

“Yeah,” he says, scratching a patch of dry skin behind his ear. “We can probably fill it up now. Grab the gas cylinder.” He points and moves back to crouch besides the wild tubing beneath the bench.

Ian lugs the green tank away from the copper covered walls. They’d put the metal netting up weeks ago. It covers the room head to toe like amber spider webs.

“The hell is Argon?” Ian asks, reading the label on the tank; _Property of the University of Chicago_ and Ian doesn’t want to know what lengths Lip went to get it.

“Noble gas,” Lip says, taking the nozzle of the tank and locking it into a valve leading into the pvc. He checks the pressure.

“Safe?” Ian asks, hunkering down besides Lip. The bench shakes as he braces himself against it. The water ripples in the cup.

“Colorless, odorless, nonflammable, nontoxic. Basically not even there.”

Just like the machine.

No one knows what they’ve been building. Kash lets them use the basement of his convenience store. Carl has helped them rummage around the junk yards. No one else.

The tank moans as Lip lets the argon into the tubing.

“This is it huh?” Ian says, flicking his cigarette. “This is the end?”

“Well no, we still have to—ow fuck,” Lip mumbles, shaking out his finger after pinching it. “We have to add something to control how much power we use.”

“That wasn’t on the to-do list.”

“I know. I just added it.” Lip closes the tank and unhooks it from the pvc. “I was thinking earlier and it’ll be way easier to make out what time we go back to if we can control the amount of power we use. We also have to establish rules.” Lip laughs when he notices the wild look Ian is giving him, snatching the cigarette out of his mouth. “First rule of time travel club,” he says, blowing smoke into a cloud above them.

“Don’t talk about time travel club?”

Lip clicks his tongue and points at Ian. “Correctomundo. Second rule of time travel club; we can’t fuck it up man. I mean we don’t know if time is fixed already or if we can change it, but we have to be careful.” Lip pulls himself to his feet and starts dragging the gas cylinder towards the wall again. “We don’t want to cause any paradoxes; that would suck big time.” Lip pauses as he straightens up again, coming to stand beside Ian. “Third rule of time travel club; we can’t bring any shit with us. If we leave something in the past, it’s still connected to the present time loop. And that could cause some crazy shit. Someone messes with an object out of its time loop while we’re using the machine, they could be blasted into the future.

Ian takes back the cigarette. They face the machine.

“Fourth rule of time travel club?”

"I’ll think of something.”

Ian flicks the cigarette.

They can hear the rain all the way from the basement. The cheap one direction fan in the corner blows their hair like wheat fields. Ian scratches his chest. The cigarette is passed between them. Thunder almost makes them drop it.

The water ripples in the cup.

“We gotta get home, man,” Lip says, stubbing out his cigarette between the copper wiring covering the wall.

“Yeah,” Ian says, straightening up and crossing the room to grab the cup off the work table. Fingers around waxy paper.

“Hey, you wanna—shit!”

Thunder makes him drop it.       

The water no longer ripples in the cup.

The machine is wet.

A flash of bright light and Lip swears as the single bulb hanging from the ceiling bursts sending sparks like star clusters into the air and the building rumbles and the copper on the walls heats up and glows gold. Ian’s legs feel like jelly donuts and then the dirty concrete is cool against his sweaty cheek, his head merri-go-round.

 

* * *

 

It smells like rain in the summertime when the air is hot and the dust builds up in your nose. Ian breathes it in eagerly, coughing as he sits up.

“Lip?”

Laughter comes from somewhere far away.

“Right here.”

Ian coughs again, swiping at his face only to find that it’s wet. His brow furrows. The black surrounding them is too dark to see through. Ian’s stomach twists

“I think I blacked out, I think… oh man—” Ian cuts himself off, vomiting onto the floor beside himself. Everything is white behind his eyelids.

“Did you just puke?”

“Uhuh,” Ian blubbers, wiping his mouth carefully, trying to steady himself. “Are there people upstairs?”

He can hear them through the floor boards. Footsteps footsteps.

“Don’t know. How bad is the machine fucked up? Did you see it before the light turned out?

“Fuck that man, we could be getting robbed blind right now. And I am _not_ in the mood for Linda to be up my ass tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lip mutters and Ian can hear him across the room, rummaging around, standing up. Ian gives himself a minute before doing the same, still woozy.

“Where the hell is the light switch?”

“Right side of the door,” Ian mumbles from where he’s attempting to stand.

“It’s not fucking here.”

“Doesn’t matter, I think the lights broken.”

Lip huffs and opens the door out of the back half of the basement. Ian can hear him crossing the front half and fumbling up the steps. “Since when is there so much shit down here Ian, your pedophile boyfriend needs to clean up. This is a minefiel--.”

Ian is fully on his feet when Lip falters and his voice fades away. Ian crosses the room to the door, sliding through. Lip is right, the front half of the basement is littered with jagged silhouettes, more so than Ian remembered. He runs into several of them before he’s actually getting himself up the flight of stairs.

“Why are you just standing there?” Ian mumbles, trying to push past Lip who’s lingering in the doorway, looking out.

“Shit!” Lip ducks down, almost pushing Ian into a tumble. Ian gets a glimpse of someone walking by the door.

“Who was that? Jesus Lip, _move._ ”

Ian pushes past his brother and steps out of the basement.

He is very certain of the fact that this is _not_ the Kash and Grab

“Well we’re not in fucking Kansas anymore,” Lip whispers from behind him.


	2. 1924

_March 2 nd, 1924; The Onyx Theater, Chicago_

_7:44 PM_

 

The hallway is long and blank and completely empty save for the man who had just passed the basement door, dressed in black, fire on his heels as he escapes into another room.

“Are we…?” Ian says quietly, still standing in the doorway.

“I think we are.”

“ _Fuck…”_ Ian mumbles, only to be pushed hard in the back, Lip shoving him into the blanched hallway, the red carpet bright beneath their feet. The laughter is getting louder and the two of them gravitate towards it.

Ian can’t comprehend a single thing, his head completely empty. They’re stepping on new ground, he’s pretty sure his nose is bleeding, his stomach feels like it’s falling right out his ass and he can’t do anything about it except follow Lip.

The next hall they come across has names on the doors and Lip pushes Ian into one that’s ajar. The laughter is still prevalent.

“What are you doing?” Ian mutters, watching Lip cross what seems to be a dressing room, littered with stage makeup and costumes.

“Paper,” he says, picking up a newspaper he’d seen sitting there on a vanity. Lip and his fucking otherworldly observational skills.

“What day is it?”

Lip is quiet for a moment before looking up.

“It’s nineteen fucking twenty four. Ho- _ly_ shit. Holy _shit.”_

“Jesus Christ.”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ. Jesus, Mary and fucking _Joseph_ , Ian! We fucking did it!” Lip is shaking the paper at him, his eyes wild with fireworks.

“Fuck.”

“We fucking _did it!”_ Lip grabs his shoulders, shaking him a little. “We fucking did it, Christ! We traveled to another fucking time, we’re fucking _invincible!_ We’re invincible!”

Ian is wide eyed and stock still as Lip shakes the paper around, prancing about, kicking things like some hurtling football coach who’s just won the super bowl. All Ian can do is watch him until he’s calmed down, pulling at his hair.

“Okay, okay, fucking Christ, what was the Kash and Grab in the 1920's? God we shoulda did research—this is a dressing room right, it’s probably some kind of theater?”

Ian nods, white as a ghost.

“Shit man, you’ve got… blood all over your face, did you smack into something? Here.” Lip grabs a silk robe from off the vanity chair, passing it to Ian before continuing. “Okay, uh, disguises! We can’t go out there looking like we’re from the 21st fucking century.”

“No one’s gonna notice us,” Ian says, finally speaking again, attempting to gather his bearings as he wipes his bloody nose away.

“Yeah they will, you think you’d notice if some guy walked into our time dressed in some 1800's get up? We’re in fucking cotton t-shirts and jeans.”

Ian looks down at his 8 ball shirt and favorite pants, the one with the hole in the knee, as Lip begins to rummage through the wardrobe against the back wall. Ian takes the jacket and hat Lip hands him, dressing himself, Lip doing the same. Lip takes a step back to examine the two of them in the mirror, flattening his mouth and shrugging his soldiers.

“Yeah,” he says before spotting something else. He reaches forward and plucks two of the artfully painted masks off the vanity. He places a plain white, almost Phantom of the Opera type mask on himself, handing Ian a silver one with hand painted vines around the edges. “Just in case,” Lip says as he situates his mask on his face.

“We look fucking ridiculous,” Ian mumbles and Lip grins before quickly leaving the room, Ian following after him. Ian’s heart has finally begun to race now, as if the costume has brought him out of his reverie and into reality. If you can call this reality. He’s 98% certain he’s dreaming.

They find themselves following after the laughter and music, trying to act natural, but that’s particularly hard when you’re dressed in a suit jacket over your t-shirt and jeans. They’re lucky to not run into anyone save a few people congregated at one end of a hall that clearly leads to a lobby. They avoid that route and go in a different direction, finding themselves slipping into the auditorium through an unguarded side door.

The theater is massive. The walls seem to go on forever, veins of gold and mahogany reaching upwards and upwards and getting lost against the ceiling, painted heaven. They almost lose their hats, and their faith, looking up at it. This is clearly where the laughter had come from, the place full to the brim with people dressed to the T in three piece suits and twenties style jackets. The whole nine yards. They look so out of place it isn’t even funny.

The lights begin to dim and they’re lucky because their jeans were still visible and anyone filling up the rows of seats could have spotted them. They move quickly to grab two open seats on the end of the row in front of them. The whole house falls into silence, anticipation growing deep in the belly of the pit.  

The curtains spread, the stage lit in blue.

_“Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour_

_Draws on apace; four happy days bring in_

_Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow_

_This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,”_ Says a man in red woven robes and the two of them stare along in awe.

“It’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Lip says after a moment, and Ian grins, both of them sitting forward in their seats to watch the play unfold before them in blue and fairy dust and it’s magical, putting the two of them to silence.

It isn’t until the second act that Lip speaks again.

“Do you see that guy?” Lip murmurs, leaning into Ian so he can hear them.

He’s pointing two the man playing Puck, standing tall with a wide grin and a full head of red hair.

“Yeah?” Ian says, squinting at him and he gets it before Lip even says it. Looking at the actor is like looking in a mirror.

“He looks just fucking like you, man,” Lip says. “That’s some doppelganger shit going-“

The room rings and the boys are temporarily deaf as a gun is fired behind them.

The house is quiet for one suspended moment before the sea of people rise up in a scream. Ian has nearly jumped out of his skin, Lip already on his feet. He’s grabbing Ian by the collar and pulling him up from the red velvet seating as the place swirls into turmoil, people pushing and yelling.

One bullet. Two bullets.

“We’re gonna get fucking shot!” Ian shouts above the panic and Lip is fucking _laughing_ as he pulls Ian forward out into the outside aisle.

“Good ol’fucking Chicago!” Lip whoops and the two of them are spilling out through the door that they’d come in through. The crowd begins to flow through behind them, but they scatter towards the front end of the theater, Lip deciding it would be best to go back the way they came.

Lip has this wild grin on his face and sometimes Ian worries about his brother’s sanity, but right now, he kind of can’t. His heart is racing, adrenaline spinning his head around and he can’t help but grin too, laughing as the two of them run from imminent death. It’s a crazy what-the-fuck-is-happening sort of laugh, but it’s a laugh and they push at each other as they run, the red carpet like a river beneath them.

“Hey!”

Someone is yelling at them as they turn a corner, Lip already down the next hall, Ian shifting his head to glimpse a man in a gray three piece suit, running after them, his dark gelled hair falling into his face. His eyes are so blue Ian can see them from twenty feet away.

And he’s got a gun.

Ian nearly trips as he rounds the corner, and his feet can’t go fast enough.

“That guys fucking armed!” Ian yells and he’s not laughing anymore as they go down the corridor lined in dressing rooms, empty save for a man leaning against the wall ahead of them.

“You don’t get to run away from me you fucking _faggot_ ,” the man behind them is yelling and Ian is so goddamned confused but he’s got a pistol and they can’t do anything but run.

The man against the wall ahead of them is dressed in black and he seems to be the one that passed by the basement door when they were leaving. Ian barely has time to asses him before he’s slipping into a dressing room.

Their feet pound the carpet.

“Get your scrawny red headed ass back here, I swear to god!”

“Fuck Lip, go go go!”

Ian pushes on Lip’s back, trying to get him to run faster before this guy busts a cap in their asses, only his shove sends Lip right into the man in black who’s just stepped out of the dressing room again. Lip tumbles, his wallet slipping out from his pocket, pennies catching the light as they fall all over the floor. The man in black steps backwards and Ian catches a glimpse of him standing there with a hood up, his face golden only it’s a mask much like Ian’s with a beak like a bird sticking out from his nose. Ian blinks at him, the man’s green eyes blinking back before Lip is shoving up from the ground.

“Fucking help me,” Lip says as he tries to scoop up the pennies but it’s no use and the man behind them is yelling. Ian hauls his brother off the ground and the two of them run forward, leaving the man and black with his golden face and the pennies on the ground. 

The gun goes off again.

They round the corner that leads them to the basement door. Ian braces himself to be shot and lets out a breath when pain doesn’t bloom in his back. Lip gets the door open and they’re tumbling down the steps, racing for the door to the back half of the basement. Loud steps like fireworks as the man with the dark hair and the blue blue blue eyes races after them yelling profanities. The room lights up for a split second, the gun going off in the dark.

“There’s nowhere to fucking run!”

Lip pushes the door open, Ian behind him. Ian races to slam the door and lock it but the man shoulders it, pushing hard, banging on it like some wild animal.

“What the _fuck_ does he want?!” Lip yells, disappearing into the dark towards the middle of the room.

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Ian can feel the heat in his face, his heart sitting at the bottom of his throat.

The whole room lights up in a buzz as Lip fucks with the machine. Neither of them know really how they got there, just that Ian had spilled water and suddenly they’d walked into the 1920's. Lip isn’t sure what to do, the machine isn’t even finished, and so he decides to do what he always planned to do to get them back home. Split the time loop. 

* * *

 

_“Alright, so say this very moment in time is point A.”_

_“Right.”_

_Lip is bent over a piece of paper, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he draws a dot with a blue pen. He labels it A and scrawls 2014 next to it._

_“Time is just the direction we’re moving between events, right now we’re going forward.”_

_The pen moves across the page as Lip draws an arrow forward off of point A._

_“Okay.”_

_“Right, so when you’re in the box-”_

_“It’s a basement.”_

_“Shut the fuck up, Ian. When you’re in it, and you turn it on, it creates a current. The current pushes you to experience time differently relative to someone else outside the box. So everything is running backwards for you while it’s still running forwards for everyone else.”_

_Lip begins to draw an arrow in the opposite direction, out from point A. He stops it and draws point B at the end. “When you suspend the current it puts you at point B. We don’t know what time that is yet.” A question mark is placed beside point B. “Suspended currents are basically just sitting idle but time is always moving, so we swing back around and start going forward again. It’s a time loop. We’re looping back to point A, we’re just going slower this time.” Lip draws the said loop. His cheeks have reddened from the heat._

_“This is confusing as fuck,” Ian mumbles._

_Lip grunts before continuing. “When we go back, we’re objects out of place and it puts tension on the current, which is still running in suspension, just in slow motion, or what we perceive as normal speed. But when you cut the circuit off completely it snaps the loop, like a rubber band.”_

_“How do you cut off the circuit?”_

_“Remember in elementary school when you made those battery powered circuits that lit up a little light bulb if you didn’t fuck it up?” Ian nods. “It’s like that. There’ll be a part of the machine that you can move to disconnect the circuit manually and that’ll get us thrown back to point A, the exact time we left. Or-- I’m betting on the exact.”_

_“What’s that supposed to mean?”_

_Lip looks up at him with his blue saucer eyes. “I don’t know everything Ian, this is all just a theory.”_

_“So we’re going into this blind.”_

_“Basically,” Lip says around his cigarette. He shrugs and turns back to the paper, tapping it with the blue end of his pen, leaving little dots on the page like ants. “So here are our limits. Point B is always going to be behind Point A, we can only go backwards from the present. No Back to the Future Two shit, we’re sticking with the first one.”_

_Ian nods._

_“We also can’t go farther back once we’re at point B. If we start at 12:02 and go back to 12:01 we can’t go from 12:01 to 12:00. We have to return to 12:02 first, and then we can go back to 12:00. At least, so far anyway, I’m working out ideas to get us back even further, but it’s complicated.”_

_“This whole thing is complicated.”_

_“You want me to call the wambulance? You’re the one who wanted me to explain it.”_

_Ian gives him a dirty look before standing up, rubbing his chest, looking across the tiny convenience store with ease. “You’re a lunatic,” he says and Lip questions whether or not Ian’s going to be in on this before Ian scratches the top of his head and asks if he has a parts list._

_“What?”_

_“Do you have a parts list?” Ian says slower this time like Lip’s stupid or something._

_Lip looks at him blankly._

_"That’s what I’m here for,” Ian chuckles, before stretching and walking around the counter._

_"So you’re in?"_

_"I’m in.”_

* * *

 

“Get the fucking door closed!” Lip is yelling because he doesn’t think he can cut the circuit with the door open.

“You think I’m not trying?! Just do it!”

Lip holds his breath, Ian pushing with all of his might on the door as Lip flips the switch to break the circuit.

The room shakes.

Phillip Gallagher’s legs shake as he crumples.

Ian Gallagher loses his balance.

Mickey Milkovich pushes hard on the door and falls inside.

Everything spins until the three of them can’t keep their eyes open anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the time machine and the time travel are a tiny bit based on the movie Primer (which I highly suggest you watch, it's fantastic). I didn't take any of the plot, just some of the time travel bits (only it's modified to fit this story). So yeah, credit to them.


	3. Jack

_Saturday, July 21 st Present Day; Southside Chicago_

_4:33 PM_

 

_Ian._

_Ian._

Ian.

“Ian!”

Someone is leaning over him and they smell like cough syrup and cigarettes. Everything is incredibly bright, like the sun has been plucked out of the solar system and placed right there above him.

“Did I die?” Ian blubbers incoherently, closing his eyes again, woozy and out of place. Everything spins in an effortless elegant circle. “Are you… Jesus? You gotta… gotta be kidding me, you’re real? I owe Anthony Batista like… ten bucks now, great, thanks.”

“Not Jesus, dumbass.” Ian barely has time to register that the voice is Lip’s. He’s slapped across the face before he can inquire about whether or not his debt is null in Heaven.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Ian mumbles as he sits upright abruptly, stars behind his eyelids. He coughs, and there’s the smell again, the smell before rain. Ian’s nose twitches. “Where are we?” He gets out, blinking away the blurriness in front of him. “ _When_ are we?”

“Home,” Lip says, nodding, but he doesn’t mean the house; if they were there it would be loud and smell like scrambled eggs and laundry detergent. Lip means Chicago, he means the twenty first century. _That_ home. Apparently specifying between the two has become a necessity because.

They can time travel.

Time. Travel.

Holy Jesus.

“We’re home. We landed the same time we left, pretty sure,” Lip finishes and Ian lets out a breath of relief. The whole trip comes back to him, _everything_ spinning in a kaleidoscope blur, the play and the gun and the man with the lapis eyes, yelling as he thundered against the door.

“That guy…?” Ian asks, frowning.

He’d gotten in.

He’d gotten inside the basement.

Lip nods towards the wall. Against it is the man in the gray suit. His arms are tied with extra wire, left over from the machine.

“Holy shit... that’s not good.”

“Thanks for the input, captain fucking obvious,” Lip says irritably, pulling himself to his feet.

“Why was he even following us?” Ian asks. He holds a hand out for Lip to help him up, Lip hauling his arm as he speaks.

“Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck even cares? We just have to get him back to his time. This is _not_ gonna fly.”

The two of them turn towards the unconscious street rat against the wall.

“We don’t even know what happened to the machine, I spilt water on it; it’s not like it’s _finished_.”

“Precisely the reason we’re going to finish it. That guy can’t go running around Chicago, he’ll get us caught. And, oh y’know, _fuck up the space-time continuum._ ”

“But the water…?”

“Yeah, I don’t know either.” Lip shakes his head, just as baffled as Ian. The plan didn’t have anything to do with water. They hadn’t even set the machine up to travel—how the damn thing got itself going with a cup of convenience store bathroom sink scum is a mystery to everyone. “We’re just going to stick with the plan, alright? We’ll get it working.”

“What are we gonna do with him until then?” Ian asks, looking down at the sleeping man. He looks significantly less angry laying there on the concrete, propped up, his head lulling to the side. His cheeks are pink and his suit disheveled like he’s just wandered out of bed. He looks more like a mouse than a man who Lip tied up and took a gun off of.

“I dunno… we can’t bring him home, someone’s gonna ask about him.”

“What about Karen’s place?”

“Nah, Sheila will freak him out… when does Kash get back?”

“Linda said they’re in Florida until the 30th—why?”

Lip’s mouth pulls into a smirk and he looks up at the ceiling. “Kash’s apartment, man.”

“What? No. _Nu-uh._ I am _not_ dragging Kash and Linda into this, okay, I’m supposed to water the plants and run the store in the afternoons, that’s _it_ Lip. Stop looking at me like that! What am I supposed to tell them—oh yeah, sorry I had to harbor a gun wielding mobster from the 1920’s in your house, Kash, it was _nothing_ ,” Ian says sarcastically, waving his hands around, but Lip is already moving to pick up Unconscious McGangster. “We’re seriously doing this? Are you fucking with me right now, Lip? _Lip!_ ”

“Just help me! Where else are we going to put him!?”

Ian looks between his brother and their problem laying comatose on the floor, disheveled and dirty, the thug version of Raggedy Andy. Lip already has him by the feet, he’s looking at Ian expectantly, and Ian finally heaves a sigh before stepping forward, stooping down to hook his hands under sweaty shoulders. They heave the man out of the basement.

“Why is he still passed out?” Ian strains as they’re halfway up the stairs. They’ve nearly dropped him twice.

“Now is not a good time to ask stupid questions,” Lip snarls, angrily shoving them forward. “I don’t know, maybe the first time you travel it’s more hard hitting on your system, who the fuck knows?”

“I call bullshit.”

They make it up the two flights of stairs without killing anyone, heading into the apartment and dropping the dead weight on Kash’s couch, face first.

Ian has no clue how this is going to work.

“So we’re just gonna leave him here?” Ian asks. He and Lip stand side by side, looking down on their new charge.

“Someone’s gotta spend the night with him.” Lip shrugs.

“Well, that’s not gonna be _me_.”

“You were the one who spilled the fucking water, Ian, this is your fault.”

“Yeah, but I called not it,” Ian says, holding his hands up and wiggling his fingers like somehow not-itting made this whole thing a lot better.

“Rock-paper-scissors?” Lip says and it almost feels childish but Ian shrugs, searching for some sort of normalcy. They pound their fists on their hands three times and launch.

“Rock beats scissors, bitch.” Ian grins. He pretends like there isn’t a man from the twentieth century on his employer/casual boyfriend’s couch and rubs his fist against Lip’s defeated two fingers. “Don’t mess up the house while I’m gone, yeah? You break something it’s on my ass.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lip rolls his eyes, dropping his hand and starting towards the kitchen. Might as well raid Kash’s refrigerator.

Ian glances at the sleeping man on the couch one more time.  Then he heads out the door.

That night he sleeps fourteen hours straight.

 

* * *

 

_Sunday, July 22 nd Present Day; Southside Chicago_

_9:27 AM_

 

“His name is Mickey and he is annoying as _fuck_ ,” Lip says as soon as Ian walks in the door.

Ian can hear someone shouting from the other room.

Why the fuck would someone name such a violent person _Mickey_.

“Jesus,” Ian says, rubber necking to try and see across the living room and into the bedroom doorway. He’d gotten a false sense of normalcy after going home to his family and forgetting about what they’d built in the basement for a short sweet few hours.

He looks down at his hands as Lip shoves an M1911 semi-automatic pistol into his hands, an average standard service pistol sure, but this one’s from 1924. It’s beat up around the edges, but in mint condition compared to the one he saw in the WWII exhibit they put up last year at the Chicago Museum of History. He just about pees his pants.

Maybe there’s a couple good things about time travel.

“Have fun!” Lip says, knocking him from his reverie with a pat to Ian’s shoulder. Lip heads past him, the door slams in his wake and Ian can nearly hear Lip’s sigh of utter relief.

The yelling from the back room continues. Ian grinds his teeth.

Looking down at the gun, he makes a mental effort to not be distracted and shoves it in his back pocket.

_Brace yourself._

Crossing the living room feels like an eternity and then suddenly he’s toeing into Kash and Linda’s bedroom. It’s odd seeing it in the daylight. He’s never been up here with the sunlight coming in through the window. It floats through the blinds and leaves lines over the bed and Mickey sitting beside it—Ian doesn’t know how easy it’s going to be calling him that. All he can think of is _Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse._ Almost disturbing.

He’s against the right corner of the headboard, his arms looped around the leg of the bed and secured tightly behind him. He’s lost his jacket, and the sweat stains create oceans under his waist coat, his tie hanging loosely like a wrung bird around his neck. He looks tired.

“Oh great, there’s fucking _two_ of you?” Mickey grumbles, his voice defeated. He’s leant his head back against the bed, his cheeks flushed from yelling, probably. His voice rises as he speaks. “Look, I ain’t got time for your wackadoo bull shit, alright? Let me the fuck go!” He’s snarling, his energy coming in bursts. He twists in his binds, pulling forward angrily. Ian can see the strain in his face. He deflates quickly, bent in half, his wrists rubbing against the leg of the bed. “Come on, jack, lemme have some fucking dignity; I gotta piss like a horse.”

Ian looks between the bathroom and Mickey.

“Promise not to take off?” Ian asks. He slides the gun halfway out of his back pocket suggestively. “I can hit a freckle from a 100 feet.”

Mickey looks up, pales, looks back down.

“What, you some sorta army meat?” he says to his thighs.

“Not quite.” A specter smile dances slowly on Ian’s face.

“Just lemme piss, I’m not gonna bolt.”

Ian would say he couldn’t believe Lip would let this guy sit all night without access to the bathroom, if it weren’t for the fact that that sounds exactly like something Lip would do. Ian shakes his head as he passes through the door, rounds the bed.

“There’s a knife in my jacket,” Mickey says quickly, nodding towards the gray coat that’s tossed against the wall, just out of Mickey’s reach. Ian’s sure Mickey’s been trying to get at it all night. Ian retrieves it, feeling a little guilty.

He produces a knife from the right front pocket. It’s a butterfly and he spins it a little, watching it flip like a Blue Mountain Swallowtail before he kneels beside Mickey and reaches for his wrists. They disappear in front of Mickey as soon as the wires snap. Ian’s pretty sure the ties broke skin, but Mickey is on his feet too fast to tell, rushing through the bedroom. Fear blossoms and Ian thinks Mickey might head straight out the door, but he turns into the open bathroom instead.

Ian pockets the knife and follows closely behind, finding himself standing just outside the doorway as Mickey pees out the entirety of Niagara Falls. Ian swears it lasts for a whole _minute_ before Mickey’s zipping his pants back up. Mickey sort of stands there gingerly, glancing down at the porcelain like he’s noticing it for the first time. He’s looking around at the purple shower curtain and the shampoo bottles and the linoleum flooring and he seems like an astronaut on the moon.

“What kind of fucking sick joke is this?” Mickey mumbles in awe. “I swear I didn’t fuck up bad enough to deserve this, jack.” And Ian still doesn’t know why Mickey keeps calling him that.

“My names Ian,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Not Jack.”

Mickey turns to look at him, his brow scrunched up.

“I wasn’t calling… Jesus fucking Christ, _enough._ Enough of—of _this_ , alright? Whatever my old man told you to do, whatever sort of fucking game we’re playing here, I’m done. Just let me go the fuck home, okay?” There’s something in his blue eyes, something behind the anger. Mickey’s scared.

“Did Lip not tell you?”

“Tell me _what?_ ”

Leave it to Lip to put all of the hard stuff on Ian. He’s still trying to wrap his head around all of this. He barely understands what’s happened and now he’s got to convince this guy—this guy who seems so stubborn—that it’s the real deal. That they actually did the impossible.

“We’re not in 1924, dude.”

Mickey gives him this completely incredulous look. “You alright? Someone drop you on your head when you was a baby, cause you ain’t making. Any. Fucking. Sense.”

Ian scrubs his eye sockets with the heels of his palms.

“Okay, listen, you’re not going to believe me, but my brother and I built a time machine.”

“Time mawhat?”

“A time machine. Y’know like, uh, Doctor Who or whatever—wait you probably don’t know what that is, okay, uh I dunno, A Christmas Carol, you ever read that?”

“Does it look like I’m the reading type?”

“Have you _heard_ of it? Do you know what it’s _about?_ ”

Mickey blinks, nodding his head as he shrugs. “Yeah.”

 “Alright, you know how the guy meets the ghost of the future and they go and see him like, dead.” Mickey nods. “It’s like that. We went forward in time.”

An understanding sort of comes over him and for a moment there’s _hope_ , but Mickey’s rolling his eyes the next second. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“I know, even I’m still having trouble understanding it, but I mean, why would I lie? What would possess anyone to try to fake this out?”

“Okay, you keep using lingo I ain’t got a clue about,” Mickey says irritably and he tries to side step Ian, but Ian moves to block him in the bathroom, not letting him leave until he understands that he can’t fuck this up.

“ _Exactly_ ,” Ian says. “That’s because I’m from the future. You’re future. It’s 2014.”

“Nah jack, it’s 1924, you got your head screwed on backwards. If it were 2014 I’d be a hundred and ten.”

Ian doesn’t know how he does the math so quick, the number comes in a blur.

“That’s what time travel is, you don’t age, you jump through time, it’s really complicated, just—”

“Okay, shut up,” Mickey says, waving his hand in front of Ian and everything gets still. Mickey looks at him with his blue eyes. “Prove it.”

Ian stares at him blankly.

“Prove that it’s the fucking future.”

The best way to prove it is to put the future right in front of him.

Ian grabs Mickey by the wrist and pulls him down the steps, through the store and out onto the street. It’s hot, the sun beating down on them, and it feels like everything is melting.

It’s an average day in July. To Ian anyway.

The world seems to move in a blur for Mickey. Beasts in red and blue spin the space in front of him, people trample by in clown suits, and he feels suddenly like everything is crashing down on him. It smells sticky and his ears hurt with overwhelming sound. The air is air and the ground is ground but this isn’t the Chicago he knows. He’s been running on stubborn disbelief for the past seventeen hours, but he can’t deny it now. He can’t explain away the odd bedroom he’d been shoved into anymore, he can’t pretend like this is just a game. This is _insane_ but it’s too big to be a joke. It’s too big.

Somewhere down the street someone is playing Reggae music. The sky is blue like Mickey’s eyes that Ian can’t stop thinking about.

Mickey nearly faints, stumbling a little and Ian has to yank him off the tarmac before he gets run over by a sedan running past them.

“The fuck was _that_ ,” Mickey barely gets out, looking after it, down the street.

“Car,” Ian says, and he can’t help but smile. Mickey is bewildered, nearly drunk on hysteria. It’s almost endearing. Ian digs out his phone. “And this is a cell phone, like a telephone, but cooler.” He clicks the On button, their faces lit up in blue. Mickey nearly jumps away from him.

“The _fuck_.”

Ian clicks it off and shoves it back in his pocket.

“Welcome to the future, Mr. McFly.”

“Milkovich. My last name is _Milkovich_ ,” Mickey says, because it’s the only thing that makes sense to him right now. Ian lets out a laugh that comes from deep in his belly and for a second he forgets about all the bullshit except for this angry little man in a gray suit and it’s okay.


	4. Band-Aid

_Sunday, July 22 nd; Present Day Southside Chicago_

_10:05 AM_

 

“God there’s so much shit you haven’t gotten to yet,” Ian says as he and Mickey carry on up the stairwell after having stood in the street for a moment. Each step seems to break the next stratosphere. The red walls get closer and closer every move Mickey makes. “I mean yeah, you missed big stuff like walking on the moon and shit—”

“Walking on the fuckin’ _moon_?” Mickey stutters. Ian laughs.

“Yeah, yeah, Neil Armstrong or whatever, there’s even a little American Flag up there—but see, that’s cool and all, but it’s nothing compared to the _good stuff_. I’m talking music, books, video games, _movies_. You haven’t _lived_ until you see every single Tarantino film. I mean come on, how do you even exist on this earth without seeing _Pulp Fiction_?” Ian turns as they reach the top of the stairs, his sneakers squeaking on the yellowed linoleum. He makes a fake gun out of his fingers, and points it at Mickey. Mickey flinches. “ _‘What’_ ain’t no country I’ve ever heard of. They speak English in _‘What’_? _English_ mother fucker, do you speak it?!” Ian even puts on the accent; he’s seen that movie so many times. But this isn’t as fun as when he and Lip do it. Lip joins in, adds all the _‘what? what?’_ s in between. Mickey just sort of _looks_ at him like he’s got small babies growing out of his face. “Oh man, see this is what I’m talking about. That’s the first thing I’m showing you, _Pulp Fiction_. And then maybe _Back to the Future_.”

“It’s like you’re speaking fucking Portuguese—I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying,” Mickey is mumbling and Ian just laughs as he shoulders open the door to the apartment.

Kash’s front door opens up into a small square living room with tan carpets, a kitchen to the right. The couch leans up against the left wall, the television on the wall with the door. Out of the living room is a small hallway with the bedrooms, a closet, and the bathroom at the end of it. Ian has to give Linda props because she’s a pretty nice decorator, the living room a soft blue with dark wood furniture and the kitchen cheery yellow, a window above the sink letting the sun in. It looks really nice for a beat up apartment above a convenience store.

“Hungry?” Ian asks, heading straight for the kitchen. “I think Kash has some breakfast stuff,” he says, reaching up to open one of the cabinets, fumbling through them. He finds Poptarts at the forefront of the mountain of boxed goods. “Hey hey, Kash knows what’s up—strawberry is the _only_ way to eat these things.” He waves the box at Mickey, who has settled for leaning on the door jam, boxed in by the frame.

“Who the hell is _Kash_?”

Ian stops.

“Uh,” he starts, distracting himself with opening the box of Poptarts, pulling out one of the silver packages. “He lives here.”

Mickey goes on to ask about where exactly ‘here’ is and Ian answers him readily, glad Mickey hadn’t lingered on the whole prospect of Kash. It’s sort of hard to talk about someone when you can’t really define the relationship you have with them.

It starts to rain outside. The Poptarts jump up from the toaster. Ian grabs them without thinking and nearly burns his fingers off.

“Ow ow ow.” Ian drops them onto a napkin quickly, holding it out to Mickey, before opening a second package and slipping two into the toaster for himself. “So yeah, still Chicago, just y’know ninety years into the future.”

Mickey is no longer listening to him, looking down at his Poptarts with concern.

“Poptarts,” Ian explains. “They’re good, just be careful, s’kinda hot.”

Mickey looks down at them and then back up at Ian in confusion.

Ian snorts, stepping forward. They stand toe to toe as he picks up one of the Poptarts from Mickey’s napkin and breaks off a piece, puts it in his mouth. “Like that,” he says around the high fructose corn syrup and bleached flour between his teeth.

“Whatever you say, jack,” Mickey says, gingerly picking up his Poptart and pulling a piece off. The toaster pastry melts on his tongue. His big blue eyes light up.

“Ain’t that the _bee’s knees!_ ”

“What’d you say?” Ian gets out, barely hanging on to his laughter, nearly choking on the Poptart.

“Whatever you say, jack…?” Mickey says, confused, broken from his reverie. He wants Ian to shut up so he can enjoy this heavenly object of desire.

“No, no, _after_ that.”

“Uh, that’s the bee’s knees?”

Ian nearly falls over with laughter, having to lean on the wall to support himself.

“What? What’s so fucking funny, shit stain?”  

 “ _You,_ ” Ian snorts,and he can’t decide whether it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard or the cutest. Something flutters in his belly. “You’re just so _violent_ and that’s so _not_.”

“Yeah, well, so’s your old man,” Mickey mumbles around the rest of the Poptart he’s shoved into his mouth. Ian doesn’t even know what that means, so he just keeps laughing, chuckling even while he’s fishing the other two Poptarts out of the toaster. Mickey eagerly accepts one of them, biting into it even though it’s got to be on fire. Ian watches him with amusement, the way his face lights up with enjoyment like a fucking _child_.

“Hey, what’s up with your wrists?” Ian asks all of a sudden. Mickey looks down at them after rubbing the crumbs off of his fingers. The skin just below the palm of his hand is bright red and puffy, bruised around the edges in purple splotches.  

“Uh.” He swipes at his mouth. “The shit your fucking friend tied me up with rubbed ‘em raw.”

“Lip’s my brother,” Ian corrects.

“Shoulda known the two of you were _related_.”

“Shut up,” Ian says, skirting around Mickey and out of the kitchen, something like concern swimming in his chest. “Sit on the couch, I think Kash has some Neosporin.”

“Neo- _what_.” Mickey is following him like some sort of lost puppy.

“Neosporin,” Ian repeats, sliding into the cluttered bathroom, his sneakers squeaking. Mickey lingers in the hallway, watching Ian fumble through the cabinet behind the mirror. “It’ll help your burns.”

“Look, I ain’t no baby, I don’t need help—”

“Just sit on the couch.”

Ian catches Mickey rolling his eyes as he toddles off to the living room. He finds the Neosporin behind a box of dinosaur Band-Aids and decides to grab those too, carrying the box and the tube of ointment into the living room.

If you ask him why he feels the need to take care of a vicious man from the 1920’s who’s presumably a member of the Mafia and had definitely tried to kill him, he won’t have an answer for you.

The look on Mickey’s face when Ian walks into the living room startles him. He’s sitting on the couch, his head down, his brows furrowed, and something is there, something like fear. Ian’s stomach falls. Mickey glances up at him and the look falls away, replaced by something harder.

Ian pretends he didn’t see it and comes to sit by Mickey on the couch, taking his wrists.

Mickey’s hands are square but soft, his fingers short, the pads of them slightly calloused and he has a raised bump on the side of the middle finger of his right hand. Ian wonders if he holds a pencil a lot. His knuckles are tattooed with crude letters that make Ian smile a little as he rubs the Neosporin onto the red marks around Mickey’s wrists. Mickey tries to hide his small but warm sighs of relief.

“Why were you trying to kill us?”

“What?” Mickey asks, his gaze on his wrists.

“When we were back in your time, you were chasing me and my brother.”

Mickey glances at him, worries at his bottom lip.

“Thought you were someone else,” he says, looking back down at his wrists again. Mickey knows something Ian doesn’t and Mickey’s not going to tell him. Ian can see it in his face. “He uh… he looked like you… at least he had the hair thing.”

“The guy who played Puck had red hair.” Ian’s been thinking about that a lot. He’s been thinking about a lot of things. Like the man with the gold mask and the hood; the one who’d tripped him. The pennies all over the floor. How incredibly _murderous_ Mickey had sounded chasing after them.

“Yeah, I… sure.”

“Why were you after him?” Ian has brought out the dinosaur Band-Aids. They had seemed funny when he’d first grabbed them, but Ian doesn’t think anything is very funny at all at the moment. Mickey’s voice is grave and his hands are warm and Ian doesn’t know what to think, let alone if he should find anything funny or not.

“That’s none of your goddamned business,” Mickey spits. Ian doesn’t ask, just puts a Band-Aid on Mickey’s glazed wounds, moves to open another.

He watches Mickey study the little green stegosaurus on his wrist.

“What’s the point of this shit?”

“It’s supposed to keep the blood from getting everywhere.”

“But it ain’t bleeding.”

“It’s just for affect, y’know? To give the illusion of healing or whatever. Kinda like how you feel safer under the covers when you sleep? Even though they wouldn’t do anything for you if something really did happen? I dunno.” Ian shrugs and his mind wanders to a vivid childhood memory of falling off the swings, his mothe- _Monica_ placing a bright yellow Band-Aid on his knee, bright like the yellow of her hair. He tucks the thought back away as soon as it comes to mind.

“You’re telling me this bright green sticker shit is supposed to make me feel safe?” Mickey asks, looking up at Ian, but he’s got something behind his eyes, a warmness and Ian can tell Mickey knows what he means. Band-Aids just make you feel better, even if they don’t really provide much protection at all.

Ian knows that incredibly well. He’s put lots of Band-Aids on lots of things. He’s pretty sure he’s put a Band-Aid on his whole life really. A bright yellow one.

“You’re an asshole,” Ian says, rolling his eyes, a laugh bubbling up and escaping him. He shakes his head as he stands up, taking the box and the Neosporin with him to the bathroom. The Band-Aids get tucked away into the cabinet and Ian stops thinking about them.  

“So, I don’t have to go work a shift until two, I guess we can just hang up here, I’ve got nothing better to do. We’ll watch movies, Kash has some good stuff,” Ian announces as he meanders out of the bathroom and into the kitchen again, shimmying through cupboards.

“How are we s’posed to watch a movie in here?” Mickey asks, and Ian leans to see him toddling around the living room, looking at stuff.

“The T.V…?” Ian trails off and he can’t remember if they had televisions yet in 1924. “You don’t know what that is, do you? Oh man.” Ian pulls the package of Oreos he’s got his hand around off the shelf and opens it as he crosses the kitchen. He pulls out a cookie, tosses the package on the coffee table as he picks up the remote, and shoves the Oreo into his mouth. He wipes his hand on his pants as he points the remote at the screen. It comes to life with a buzz, some smiling woman pushing a broom around in an infomercial. “Boring,” Ian mumbles, flicking the channel button until Hugh Laurie is sitting there, pointing his cane at someone. “Fuck yeah, _House_ is the best, he’s an asshole.” Ian mumbles around the Oreo, grinning as he turns his head to Mickey. “It’s been going for forever, y’know, ended a year ago I think. Fucking best way they could have ended it, in my opinion, Lip thought it was bullshit but everything Lip _says_ is bullshit… Mickey?”

Mickey’s kinda just been standing there, staring at the television. He glances up at Ian before stepping forward gingerly.

“S’kinda like the picture show, c’ept with like… _colors_ ,” Mickey says, and he’s got this wonder in his voice, his big eyes all lit up. He nearly jumps when _House_ says something snarky. “Holy shit! You can hear them! What, is there little fuckin’ people in the box? That’s fuckin’ crazy.” Ian watches as he sits himself way too close to the screen, cross legged. He reaches out to poke the glass, his teeth dug into his bottom lip.

Ian has to bite his tongue. Mickey is literally a member of the Chicago fucking mafia, he’s most likely _killed_ people, and yet he’s probably the cutest fucking _button_ of a person that Ian has ever met. He feels like he now knows why the elderly women at the old folks home Veronica works at always want to squeeze the fuck out of your cheeks.

Ian doesn’t squeeze Mickey’s cheeks, but he does end up sitting next to him, crossing his legs as well, the two of them sitting side-by-side, a nose away from the television like six year olds watching Saturday morning cartoons except Mickey is technically 114 and they’re watching _House_ on a Sunday.

They polish off three episodes and the whole box of Oreos (which, according to Mickey, are just slightly more enjoyable than the Poptarts), eagerly speaking in quieted voices between dialogues.

It’s weird, being around Mickey.

He doesn’t talk much, so Ian does most of it, just to fill the silence really and it’s almost refreshing if he’s going to be honest. He likes talking. It’s hard to get anything out when you have five siblings and no one really cares about what you have to say. But Ian is Mickey’s sole benefactor, his guiding light in this fucking _weird_ situation—he kind of _has_ to pay attention to Ian. And so Ian talks and it’s nice to be listened to for once.

Mickey’s kind of a little kid on the inside, really. He’s constantly asking questions, constantly looking at stuff, constantly _baffled_ by things that Ian never even thinks about. He wants to know how the television works, how Ian can make different people appear with the click of a button.

And the way his eyes light up like he’s some little kid dancing in the rain for the first time? It’s almost addictive. Ian wants to see that look on Mickey’s face every chance he can get. He wants to show him _everything._

 

* * *

 

_11:54 PM_

 

Ian has just gotten to sleep on Kash’s lumpy couch when something wakes him up from his hazy slumber. He doesn’t know where he is for a moment but the smell of baby oil and Linda’s ash wood incense bring his memory around. He blinks into the dark, sitting himself up on his elbows.

He isn’t nearly as upset about sleeping here as he had been this morning, climbing the stairs to relieve Lip of his night watch duties. If he had gone home he would have gotten summer homework done, maybe played Black Ops with Carl, cleaned his room, done nothing. Instead he’d spent his night showing Mickey pictures of the ninety years he’d missed on his phone—

_“That’s fucking hideous.”_

_“Yeah, the seventies were not a very triumphant era for the fashion industry.”_

_“No kidding.”_

—and playing cards. Mickey had been way better at poker than Ian had expected.

Ian is nearly laying back down when he hears it again. He sits up fully this time, swinging his legs over the side of the couch, the wool blanket latching onto his sweaty calves. He leans tiredly against the back of the sofa and listens.

The sound, whatever it is, is coming from the bedroom. It sounds like the mewling of a cat. But Linda’s older kid is allergic to cats.

He contemplates on whether or not to grab the gun from beneath his pillow.

He decides to leave it.

His head spins as he stands wearily, shucking the blanket and stumbling towards the bedroom. He opens the door as quietly as one can when the hinges are squeaky.

The bedroom is even darker than the living room, the shades shut to keep out the moonlight and Ian can hardly make out the bookshelves, the dresser, the bed. It all just looks like dark geometric shapes, a children’s painting in monotone.

Ian is ready to flip the lights on when something— _someone_ shuffles in the bed.

“Mickey?” Ian whispers. He nearly trips over the blankets that are piled on the floor. Mickey must have kicked them off.

His eyes begin to adjust as he steps forward, leaning over the bed. Mickey is a dark shape, sprawled out like a starfish, tossing on the sheets. He turns onto his stomach and his back is dark with sweat. He’s mumbling things that don’t make any sense.

“ _Leave her alone._ ”

“ _Please don’t._ ”

“ _I can’t do it, I can’t do it."_

It’s when Mickey turns onto his back again, that Ian realizes he’s having a nightmare. His eyes are shut tightly, his mouth turned down in a heavy frown, his brows drawn together like curtains.

Something flips in Ian’s stomach and he wants to wake Mickey up but he knows that would be a terrible idea. Mickey is, and always will be, the man who had chased Ian with a gun. The man who works for the Mafia. The man who must have killed people. Ian swallows. He wants terribly to lay down and wrap Mickey up, lean against his back like a dinosaur Band-Aid, make him feel safe, but instead he turns and walks back to the security of his couch bed.


	5. Fly Boy

_Monday, July 23 rd; Present Day Southside Chicago_

_8:15 AM_

 

Someone is whistling Rhapsody in Blue.

Ian listens quietly from his blankets, his face stuck between the couch cushion and the pillow. Hazy morning warmth presses into his chest.

He doesn’t jerk upright until metal hits plastic counter top.

“Jesus,” he mumbles, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he twists out of bed, hobbling towards the sounds of banging pots that almost bash together to the tune of the whistling. “Mickey, what… what the _fuck_.”

The kitchen should have a hazard warning for nuclear radiation because it looks like someone dropped an atom bomb into the middle of it.

The cupboards have been _desecrated,_ each and every box of junk food out on the floor or the kitchen table. The counter is covered in white powder, an upright box of Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix sitting beside the stove. Something crackles in a frying pan on top of one of the burners and Ian hopes it’s something that’s _supposed_ to be in a frying pan and not one of Linda’s good dish rags. Because you _never know_ when you’re dealing with a man from Nineteen Twenty fucking Four.

Mickey is halfway stuffed into the refrigerator, bent at the middle as he rummages through it. He pops up when Ian yells at him, a grand smile on his face as he produces a carton of eggs. His shirt is covered in pancake mix, some of it smeared on his cheek. He’s lost his tie.

“I was hungry,” Mickey says.

“So you decide to _destroy_ the kitchen?” Ian steps over a box of Cheerios in his trek to the sink.

“There’s just _so much fucking food_. You could feed the entirety of the American fucking Air Force with this kitchen.”

Ian laughs a little, pulling a cup out of the cabinet and filling it with water, gulping it down tiredly. Mickey goes on to putter about the kitchen. Ian leans against the sink. He can see into the frying pan now; Mickey’s cooking pancakes.

“Those are gonna burn,” Ian says, refilling his cup.

“Why don’t you fucking dry up,” Mickey says, moving away from where he’d been peering into the fridge again and coming to flip the pancakes. He’s fit three into the pan, and has a whole bowl of mix left.

“So what, do you not have a refrigerator?”

“Couldn’t afford one, we have an ice box though,” he says.

“We?”

“My family—goddamn, kid, you are so fucking nosey.” Mickey gives him a look before peeling the pancakes out of the frying pan and placing them on a plate. Ian shrugs and goes to grab the bowl of mix, spooning it into the pan. He turns, his spoon raised to put it in the sink but Mickey is standing there, Ian accidentally whacking him in the face with it.

“ _Shit_ ,” Ian gasps. “I did _not_ mean to do that, fuck, sorry.” He grimaces, reaching forward to try and wipe the pancake mix off of Mickey’s cheek. Mickey doesn’t look amused. He reaches into the bowl in Ian’s arms, calmly scoops the rest of the wet mix up, and flings it at Ian.

They stand there in a moment of shock, the mix drying on their skin, clumping in Ian’s hair, everything feeling a little glazed. And then Ian turns the bowl upside down and dumps it right on top of Mickey’s head. It falls over Mickey’s eyes, giving Ian a window of time to grab his next weapon; the Cheerios off the floor. He starts whipping round loops of whole grain cereal at Mickey’s face as soon as he gets the bowl off his head.

“It’s on like mother fucking Donkey Kong!” Ian shouts as Mickey picks up the carton of eggs, lopping them at Ian two at a time. The entirety of the contents of the cabinets gets dumped on the linoleum, the yellow walls and their clothes and hair and skin. They don’t stop throwing things at one another until the smoke detector goes off. Mickey nearly has a heart attack and Ian has to explain to him that it isn’t the police, they just have to turn off the fire alarm. Ian dumps the burnt pancakes in the trash and they open up all of the windows to air the place out. They end up at the kitchen table, eating the three cold pancakes Mickey had managed to make, seated amidst the fallout, the kitchen colorfully covered in fruit loops and granulated sugar.

Ian decides not to ask stupid questions anymore. He lets Mickey ask about how the fire alarm works and the ridiculously high price stamped on the egg cartons and forgets about wondering who Mickey lives with, if he has a family, how many people he’s killed.

They spend two hours cleaning up the kitchen.

Ian’s shift starts at noon and Mickey joins him in the store this time, rather than napping the afternoon away like he had the day before. Ian lets Mickey wander while he rings up things for customers.

“Where’d you get that?” Ian asks at two o’clock when Mickey meanders behind the counter to look at the rows and rows of cigarettes. He’s got a package of Hostess Sno Balls in his hands, biting into one as he looks over at Ian.

“From the shelf?” Mickey says, nodding into one of the rows of packaged goods.

“ _Mickey_.”

“What?” Mickey asks, his mouth full.

“You got any cash on you?” Mickey shakes his head. “Yeah, exactly, who’s gonna pay for that?”

Mickey shrugs.

“You’re _useless_.”

“Just tell that Kash guy someone stole it.”

Mickey spends the rest of the afternoon taking food from the racks, despite how many times Ian tells him not to. Eventually Ian just stops mentioning it and just asks for Mickey to share.

Lip comes in around four carrying an old cardboard air conditioning box filled with junk.

“Hasn’t killed anyone has he?”

Ian shakes his head. “He’s eaten Kash out of house and home, but that’s about it.”

Lip nods and disappears into the basement.

Mickey comes out from one of the aisles, tossing back Gatorade. “He’s an asshole.”

“Yeah,” Ian says, shrugging. “Not all the time though. And he’s family, y’know?”

Mickey caps the Gatorade, a strange look on his face, like he’s lost in some other dimension.

“Yeah,” he finally says. “Family.”

The two of them play cards at the counter, occasionally pushing their game aside to ring people up. Outside of their LED lit cabinet the street gets dark, temperatures drop. Ian wants a cigarette but he can’t leave Mickey alone.

“Go fish,” Ian says.

“This is a dumbass game.” Mickey picks up cards from the little pile in the middle. He matches two sevens and places them in front of him.

“You got a better idea?” Ian asks as he reviews his cards. “Any eights?”

“Go fish,” Mickey says. He considers the pile of red Bicycles on the counter. “You could tell me why you carry my gun around in your pocket.”

Ian scratches his nose. He picks up an ace of spades. The pistol becomes heavy in his jeans.

“You could tell me why you had the gun in the first place.”

Mickey looks up at him, Ian meeting his gaze. They stare at each other for a few moments, something hanging in the air between them before Mickey swallows and looks back down at his cards. “Any twos?”

They pass back and forth until they run out of cards. Shuffle, begin again.

“I just like them,” Ian says all of a sudden as Mickey passes him a 10. “Some people like baseball cards. I like guns. I dunno… I’m good with them.”

It’s the only thing he’s really good at if he’s going to be honest with himself.

“That why you wanna be one of those fly boys?” Mickey asks. He’s let his cards lower. Ian can see them but he doesn’t mention it.

“Fly boy?”

“Y’know, air fighter.”

“I don’t want to fly, I just wanna…”

“Fight for what’s right?”

“No… well yes, but...” Ian’s cards have lowered too but neither of them notice. Ian thinks for a moment, carefully configuring what he’s going to say next. “There’s gotta be some place in this world for everyone, y’know? Like destiny or whatever.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Shut up. I just think I’m supposed to be in the army, alright? I belong there, it’s… it’s always been that way. I’m good at it, I’m respected in ROTC, I… don’t know, there’s something about being behind a gun, y’know?”

Mickey swallows. “Yeah,” he says, with a nod, dropping his head, looking back down at his cards. There’s something in his eyes that Ian can’t quite reach.

“Hey, Mickey?”

“What?”

“You haven’t killed any-“

“I have to take a piss.” Mickey pushes out of his seat abruptly. His stool screams as the metal scrapes the floor. His shoulders are rigid as he slips by the hall of cigarettes and into the bathroom.

Ian quietly picks up the cards and wonders what Mickey’s answer would have been.

The guy who’s working the night shift this week arrives not five minutes later and Ian drags Mickey upstairs, leaving him there with a bag of chips and a movie to watch, before he slips back down to the basement.

Lip is hovering over the machine, fucking with a circuit board. His fingers are greasy.

“You heading out?” he asks.

“Yeah, I just came down to see how it was going,” Ian says, stepping forward. He shoves his hands in his pockets, leaning over to get a look at what Lip is doing. It’s all just a mess of wires and metal to him. It’s sort of hard to really understand something when you’re brother doesn’t like to explain stuff to you. Ian gets the basics of the machinery, most of his knowledge based off what Lip has told him, but Lip always leaves out shit, skips the complicated part of the explaining. Ian loves him but sometimes Lip assumes people are dumber than they actually are. “I didn’t fuck it up too much with the water did I?”

“No actually… I mean, I was looking at it and you didn’t fuck it up at all? I don’t even know what you did to it… I’ve been tossing around theories but…”

“What theories?”

“That there was something in the water. But there isn’t any way to prove it. We can only make assumptions, if we want to do this right, once we get what’s-his-face back to 1924 we’re going to have to take this whole goddamned thing apart and rebuild it. If we want real results that we can actually write down, anyway; maybe publish it, I don’t know.”

It’s just a large scale experiment.

Lip had come up with the idea after taking a free fringe science course at the library. Ian doesn’t think even Lip thought this was really going to work. That’s why Lip had said fuck all with trying the box on a small scale and just built the whole room into it.

Neither of them really knew what the fuck they were doing.

“I was talking to Fiona last night and she said there was a power outage.”

“What?” Ian asks, his brow furrowing.

“The day it worked. She said it was around four o’clock.”

“Right around the time we left.”

“Exactly. Remember how I was talking about the current pulling more and more energy the farther back it goes in time? I think that’s what happened.”

“What do you mean?” Ian has a creeping sense that this is something Lip had left out of his explanations.

“I wanted to build something to control the date we go back to, remember? I was thinking—I’m pretty sure we can pull it off—by controlling how much power we draw, we can calculate how far we go back. I think we landed in 1924 because the power here got cut off; we drew so much of it that it blew the transformer outside, it stopped working, stopped the current, landed us in the twenties.”

"So if we can get it to cut off the power whenever we want, we can land whenever we want?”

“Right. We can use the first time we went back to calculate how much power is needed per second of time travel. Or at least roughly. We’ll have to bring a watch next time; it’ll take a few tries to get the calculations exact. Do you think Kash’ll keep letting us use the basement?”

“I… yeah.” Ian can convince him, if anything.

“Good, we’re gonna need it.”

This is serious. This is… _serious._

This isn’t just a summer project. This isn’t a robot that could get them a couple hundred bucks at a competition. This isn’t a fight club raking in two grand before they get caught by the cops.

This is real.

Everything feels heavy. Ian starts for the door.

“Hey, does Rocko still work off of West and Main?” he asks, turning on his heel.

“Why, what do you need tickets to?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, he does.”

“Cool—oh and Lip?”

“What?” Lip is already bent back over the machine.

“Don’t be an asshole, okay? Mickey’s actually… kind of alright.”

Lip rolls his eyes. “Don’t fucking fall in love with the guy, we have to return him.”

“Shut the fuck up, I’m just saying don’t be a dick.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Ian nods, chews on his lip as he climbs the stairs. He stops under the LED lights and ponders over saying goodbye to Mickey but thinks better of it and slides out of the store, walking into the dark. The gun is still heavy in his pocket.

 

* * *

 

 

_11:05 PM_

Fiona pops her head into the quiet room.

“Lights out, alright?”

Ian looks up at her from the computer, pulls off his headphones.

“I’ll shut it down in ten.”

“Whatcha doing?” She asks, coming in to lean on the back of the chair.

It’s just the two of them, Carl sleeping over a friends, Lip at the store.

“Just making a mix tape,” Ian mumbles, looking at the songs that he’s burned onto the disk so far. Thank god for illegally downloading music.

Fiona grins, squeezing his shoulder. “Is it for someone _special_?” She says in that sister voice that makes Ian wish she talked to him more.

Ian pinks, chews on his bottom lip. “You could say that.”

Fiona giggles, pulling away, ruffling his hair. “Well you better bring them by sometime, I don’t have embarrassing baby pictures kept special for nothin’.”

Ian snorts, shaking his head. “Night, Fiona.”

“G’night,” she says. She lingers in the doorway, before speaking again. “Goodnight Carl, Goodnight Lip,” she says, even though they’re not there. Ian smiles at her and she shuts the door quietly behind her.

Ian finishes burning his mix tape, places it in the unmarked case and shuts the computer. He has forgotten about the gun now nestled in the bottom drawer of the desk.

He thinks a moment, sitting there in his seat.

“Night, Mickey,” he says under his breath before standing up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mickeyslegs.tumblr.com


End file.
